The Atlantic — 50 Best Podcasts of the Year

My dad is the gift that keeps on giving.  When Esquire Classic made #20 in a list of best podcasts of the year, My Father the Bachelor was singled out as the “gateway” episode.  I love that we beat out The New Yorker Radio Hour (#23) and Fresh Air (#24)

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20. Esquire Classic
Most literary podcasts adopt a familiar highbrow voice, but Esquire Classic makes English lit conversational. Each episode sees the show reexamine one great piece from the magazine, poring over all the insider details: what Susan Orlean was thinking when she profiled a 10-year-old boy, or why Richard Ben Cramer was the perfect foil for Ted Williams. By interweaving readings of the essays with conversations between the host and someone close to the piece (usually a writer or editor), the podcast contextualizes the making of essential literature.

Gateway Episode: “My Father the Bachelor, by Martha Sherrill

Banner Episode: “What It Takes, by Richard Ben Cramer

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/the-50-best-podcasts-of-2016/510698/

Esquire Classic: The Essential Martha Sherrill

Lucky for me, I got to spend time at Esquire magazine. For about a decade, on and off, I wrote profiles and essays for the magazine, before I started writing books. There were three talented editor-in-chiefs during my tenure — Terry McDonell, Ed Kosner, and David Granger. But the amazing man who assigned and edited my work was the incomparable Mark Warren, who cared as much about my work as I did. He recently left the magazine after 28 years. I’m certain his absence will be noticed.

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This June, just before Father’s Day, the Esquire Classic archive asked me for an interview about one piece I wrote in particular, “My Father, The Bachelor,” which has become one of the most visited and shared essays in the archives.

David Brancaccio, the host of public radio’s Marketplace (among other things) interviewed me at my favorite local radio station, WOMR in Provincetown, MA — not far from where I live.

Click on this collage and it will take you to the podcast — and links to some of my other pieces:

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Rodarte Picks Jay DeFeo and “The Rose”

The Rose by Jay De Feo

The sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy — otherwise known as Rodarte, the wildly successful fashion designers from California — took their turn at the winter issue of A Magazine Curated By assembling a glorious spread of many surprises and dangerously kitsch fashion photos, all California-inspired.  Golden State natives will want to savor this issue over and over. And, best of all — for me — the issue includes an essay of mine about the Beat artist Jay De Feo and her commitment to her transcendent, seminal work, The Rose, a huge painting that is now at the Whitney but, for many years, was an albatross relegated to a dusty corner of a conference room at the San Francisco Art Institute, then covered up by drywall.

The issue of A Magazine Curated By is available for 20  Euros or the U.S. equivalent. (If it is sold out on the A Magazine website, copies may be available on Amazon and other sites selling literary collectibles.) If you are interested in De Feo and would like more information about her,  Jay De Feo and The Rose, a collection of essays and academic writing about the painting, and the artist, is available from University of California Press for $85.

A Magazine Curated By RODARTE

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